Friday 29 October sees PAMCo release its Bridge 3 2021 dataset, which includes updated print estimates for the first time in over a year.

The new release covers 24 months of print (July 2019 – June 2021) which has been fused with July 2021 Ipsos iris digital data. Collected via face-to-face (pre-Covid) and an ‘online first’ methodology (since Covid restrictions were lifted) the release has been labelled as a ‘bridge’ and should not be compared with previous PAMCo data.

Total published media now reaches a significant 91% of the UK adult population every month (48.8m people).

The new PAMCo stats show that 72% of adults read magazine media every month, with over a third reading at least one printed magazine and six in 10 reading digitally each month.

This latest release supports many of the things we already know about magazine media. Two thirds of adults say they trust what they see; six in 10 say that magazine media offers something they can’t get elsewhere; and three quarters say that time spent with magazines is time well spent.

But magazine brands are not homogenous and, as we know, one of their biggest strengths is in engaging readers around their passions, hobbies and leisure pursuits. People read magazines about the things they love, looking for expert advice, information and inspiration. The new PAMCo data shows the effect that this relationship has on trust, relevance and the value of the time spent with the magazine content. As we have seen from Ipsos iris, there are magazine brands in key sectors that also perform well for digital reach in comparison to other websites in the same category:

Food content is particularly popular. The lockdown months saw consumers turn to trusted magazine titles for home cooked recipe inspiration, with 81% saying that reading was time well spent. Eight in 10 adults say they trust what they see in food and health-related titles.

BBC Good Food was the leading website in the Lifestyle: Food & Beverage category on Ipsos iris in September, drawing over 10 million visitors to its content, with magazines Delish and Olive also featuring in the top 10.

With people spending more time at home, the homes and gardens category saw huge spikes in interest across lockdown and has continued, with people looking for inspiration on how to improve their surroundings. 64% of readers in this category said that magazine brands offered something they couldn’t get elsewhere, and the same proportion trusted what they saw.

When we look at the most recent Ipsos iris data (September), we can see that BBC Gardeners’ World, Ideal Home and Wired UK are all in the top 10 websites in the entire online Lifestyle: Home and Garden category.

In the latest PAMCo Bridge release there are also some new questions around diversity, specifically disability and sexual orientation.

From the data, we can see that magazine media is particularly efficient at reaching some of these audiences, with print magazines over-indexing for those with a disability (111). When it comes to the LGBTQ community, digital magazine brands over-index for Gay/Lesbian (112) and Bisexual (109) consumers.

“It’s great to see new Bridge data from PAMCo after the measurement restrictions imposed during lockdown. People see the consumption of positive passion-based content as ‘time well spent’, which, alongside high levels of trust is great news for advertisers when facing significant competition for consumers’ attention. We know from previous work that the advertising in magazine environments is highly welcomed, and the attention paid to commercial messages delivers strong returns.”

Sue Todd, CEO, Magnetic